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Fusion-io ioDrive Duo shatters SSD speeds: 1.5GB/s read

by Tarinder Sandhu on 12 March 2009, 09:51

Tags: Fusion-io

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How to make SSDs (solid-state drives) faster? Right now, the limiting factor seems to be the interface, running at 3.0Gbps on SATA2 drives. Seagate and AMD recently demonstrated 6Gbps SATA, but we foresee a time, in the not-too-distant future, when that bandwidth will be saturated by super-fast SSDs.

Fusion-io has already spotted the bandwidth restrictions and released the PCIe-based ioDrive, touting a 320GB model that interfaces with the system via a PCIe x4 link.

The MLC drive supports read/write speeds of 700MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively, based on random 32KB packet reads and 8KB writes, so it's pretty frikkin' fast.

Upping the ante, Fusion-io has announced the ioDrive Duo, upping per-drive capacity to 640GB - 1.28TB in late 2009, too - and sporting incredible read/write speeds of 1,500MB/s and 1,400MB/s, respectively, based on 32KB packets.

The numbers are mindboggling, but so will be the price, as the first-generation ioDrive 320GB cost a cool $14,400.

With plenty of bandwidth from a PCIe Gen 2.0 x4 link, just imagine four of these in RAID0!




HEXUS Forums :: 15 Comments

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wow thats a big cost! Guess most people will be sticking with traditional drives and SSDs then.
I'm not sure that you'd be able to use these via a raid controller. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but surely yu'd have to interface via the southbridge of an add in card to Raid these. These interface via the PCI express interface, not SATA or EDIE so I don't see how that would be possible…

Also, I don't thing that you'd be able to boot from these devices. Limited use if that is the case. F*in g quick but somewhat constrained on size to small to medium databases, with no obvious backup mechanism.
Impressive until you see the price. :surrender: I wonder what market these drives are aimed at.
I thought you RAIDed them directly with the hardware onboard via a bridge connector, but i could be wrong?

I don't see why you shouldn't be able to boot from them, assuming they have a controller BIOS, after all surely its just off the shelf components pre-assembled and tweaked?

I think the use for these will be at first, databases which are so worried about latency they don't want to use an SS SAN, there have been oodles of these about based on battery backed up RAM.
yeah i have seen the battery ones, gigabyte did one didnt they?

I could really have done with just a small 5-10GB one to use as a scratch disk as its often the hard drive which is holding back my rendering.